February 19, 2004 at 4:41 am
Two MiG-29 fighters were put up for the well-known EBay internet
auction in the USA on Tuesday evening. The starting price of
each of them is 3.5 million dollars.
The aircraft are being sold by the Landa Associates firm from
Seattle which, in its turn, represents the interests of an
anonymous aircraft seller. It says that these combat aircraft of
the well-known Soviet trademark are the world’s only ones in
private ownership.
The two aircraft are advertised as restored after overall
repairs. One of them was produced in 1983 and has only 40 hours
of flying time after the restoration, the other one was produced
in 1986 and has 110 hours of flying time. Fuselage numbers and
identification signs are absent. The selling firm said that only
those who were specially checked and received preliminary
permissions could take part in the auction.
The auction will last till February 24.
Two days ago, the Landa Associates put up for an internet
auction a scrapped American F-16 aircraft at a starting price of
$1 million. When more than 300 applications were received and
its price soared up to $99 million, the firm removed the lot and
announced that part of the applications were forged. The
Pentagon and the FBI are investigating how the scrapped F-16 has
become the property of a private company.